MOYLE, William II

Moyle’s origins are obscure, but it is tempting to speculate that like his namesake, the MP for Southwark, he was related to Walter Moyle*, the future judge, in whose private property transactions he occasionally played a part.4 CCR, 1441-7, p. 120; CP25(1)/232/73. Whatever their family relationship, the two men’s connexions were undoubtedly strengthened by their shared profession. No details of William’s early training as a lawyer have been discovered, but it was probably largely complete by Christmas 1434 when he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn. He soon began to play a full part in the life of the inn. In 1442-3 he officiated as an auditor of some of the communal accounts, and he went on to serve two spells as one of the inn’s governors in 1444-5 and 1449-50.5 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 5, 10, 13, 15-16, 19.

Although much of Moyle’s later career was to be focused on the south-east, he appears to have found his earliest clients further afield. In the summer of 1434 he was acting for the under-age earl of Devon, Thomas Courtenay, in the court of common pleas,6 CP40/694, rot. 328. and it may be the case that he had already forged ties with the prominent gentry family of Brooke, living at Holditch on the border of Devon and Dorset. By a royal grant of 1415, Sir Thomas Brooke† (d.1418) and his wife Joan (d.1437) held the borough of Lyme Regis to farm for their lives,7 Dorset Hist. Centre, Lyme Regis recs. DC/LR/I/6; CPR, 1413-16, p. 325; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 377-9. and it may have been to their influence that Moyle owed his return for the borough to the Parliament of 1435. Certainly, within a few years the ties between the Moyles and the prolific Brookes were sufficiently close to allow for the marriage of Moyle’s daughter Agnes to John, a younger son of Sir Thomas Brooke*, jure uxoris Lord Cobham.8 Harl. Ch. 46 H 25.

In parallel with Moyle’s growing importance among the fellowship of Lincoln’s Inn, his private practice burgeoned. He acted as counsel for a wide range of suitors in the court of Chancery;9 C254/145/98, 221, 224, 229, 231, 253, 275; 146/94, 235; CP40/756, rot. 104. Particularly in the 1440s William’s activities cannot always be distinguished with certainty from those of his putative kinsman Walter Moyle, but periodically the two were respectively styled ‘Moyle serjeant’ and ‘Moyle de hospicio Lincoln’: C254/145/102, 240. in December 1446 he was paid 40s. by the civic authorities of London for defending John Russell, one of the mayor’s serjeants, and in March the following year he was appointed to represent Thomas Beaumond, a leading salter in the city, in a dispute with the abbey of Stratford.10 Corp. London RO, jnl. 4, ff. 152, 169v. At other times, he witnessed property transactions, and acted as an attorney or an arbiter in disputes.11 CAD, ii. B2016; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 97, 355, 358, 364; E326/2224; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 104. Not long before his death, he served as a mainpernor for Robert Fleming, dean of Lincoln, Richard Alanson*, Nicholas Statham*, a fellow member of Lincoln’s Inn, and others, who were granted custody of land in Sherwood forest, Nottinghamshire, in October 1452.12 CFR, xix. 17-18; Notts. Archs., Portland mss, DD/P/CD/181.

By the early 1440s Moyle was evidently sufficiently established in the city of London to be able to contract a mariage to Margaret, the daughter of the draper Thomas Eyre. While she was not an heiress, she may have brought her husband a dowry in cash, for in March 1442 he settled upon her a jointure in property in Greenwich Lane in the parish of All Hallows the Great.13 C147/144; C146/6591. Moyle’s mother-in-law, Joan Eyre, died early in the following year, leaving the couple with the prospect of benefiting from a remainder of her property in Teston and Barming in Kent, should Margaret’s brother Thomas die childless.14 Cal. Wills ct. Husting London, ii. 500. Perhaps with the income from his legal practice, in 1445 Moyle acquired further tenements on the corner of Secoll Lane and Fleet Lane in the London parish of St. Sepulchre without Newgate, close to the inns of court and of Chancery, properties which were to remain in Moyle’s family until 1500.15 CAD, ii. B2176-8; Early Holborn and the Legal Quarter of London ed. Williams, i. 152-3, 161-2, 166; London hr 171/26.

Moyle made a will on 16 Apr. 1453 in which he arranged for the disposal of lands and tenements in both London and Kent. These were to be conveyed to his widow Margaret, with reversion to their son, John, and with further remainder to Thomas Eyre, Margaret’s brother. The will was proved on 25 Nov. following, and in February 1454 Moyle’s executor John Bekyngham and the other feoffees, transferred the property in London to Margaret.16 London hr 182/10; C147/126; E326/10009.